Complementizer
In linguistics (especially generative grammar), a complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: comp) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a sentence.
For example, the word that may be called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining.
[2]It is common for the complementizers of a language to develop historically from other syntactic categories, a process known as grammaticalization.
It is especially common for a form that otherwise means what to be borrowed as a complementizer, but other interrogative words are often used as well, as in the following colloquial English example in which unstressed how is roughly equivalent to that.
With non-finite clauses, English for in sentences like I would prefer for there to be a table in the corner shows a preposition that has arguably developed into a complementizer.
In many languages of West Africa and South Asia, the form of the complementizer can be related to the verb say.
Its existence in English has been proposed based on the following type of alternation: Because that can be inserted between the verb and the embedded clause without changing the meaning, the original sentence without a visible complementizer would be reanalyzed as Where the symbol ∅C represents the empty (or "null") complementizer, that suggests another interpretation of the earlier "how" sentence: where "how" serves as a specifier to the empty complementizer, which allows for a consistent analysis of another troublesome alternation: where "OP" represents an invisible interrogative known as an operator.
[3]Here, the marker ko also expresses epistemic uncertainty, so be can be replaced by the phonologically null complementizer without affecting meaning or grammaticality.
For example, in English, CPs selected for by manner-of-speaking verbs (whisper, mutter, groan, etc) resist C-drop:[5] In other environments, the complementizer can be omitted without loss of grammaticality but may result in semantic ambiguity.
As a syntactic head, C always selects for a complement tense phrase (TP) whose syntax and semantics are dictated by the choice of C. The choice of C can determine whether the associated TP is finite or non-finite, whether it carries the semantic meaning of certainty or uncertainty, whether it expresses a question or an assertion, etc.
For example, in Mbula, an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea, the following complementizers are available:[15] More generally, complementizers have been found to express the following values cross-linguistically: certainty, (general) uncertainty, probability, negative probability/falsehood, apprehension, and reportativity.
English can license multiple C as long as the clause is completed with the embedded V or D. For example, I saw that fox that ran towards the garden that Tommy took care of.
CP-recusion structure on the right is applied for each of the clause, which points to evidence of complementizer stacking in Danish.
[22] In Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, a modern Aramaic language, kat (or qat, depending on the dialect) is used as a complementizer and is related to the relativizer.
In Hebrew (both Modern and Ancient), two complementizers co-exist:[24] שֶ [ʃe], which is related to the relativizer asher ( < Akkadian ashru 'place') and/or to the pronominal Proto-Semitic dhu ('this'); and כִּי [ki], which is also used as a conjunction meaning 'because, when'.
[26] COMP:complementizer A:set A person marker ITS:incompletive transitive status CTS:completive transitive status COMPL:completive aspect ABST:abstract ABIL:abilitive INDIR:indirect (object)
